


come in, she said, i'll give you shelter from the storm

by ChancellorGriffin



Category: The 100 (TV)
Genre: 5x02, Angst and Porn, Comfort Sex, F/M, It's Been 45 Days Y'All, Jaha's Death Scene, Makeup Sex, PS The Character Death Is Jaha I Would Never Kill Off Kane or Abby I'm Not a Monster
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-05-05
Updated: 2018-05-05
Packaged: 2019-05-02 12:12:46
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,033
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14544486
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ChancellorGriffin/pseuds/ChancellorGriffin
Summary: Set immediately during/after the events at the end of episode 5x02, "The Red Queen."  Mild timeline retcon to slot this very important angsty reunion/comfort sex in between Jaha's death and Octavia's fight club.





	come in, she said, i'll give you shelter from the storm

**Author's Note:**

> For Slackru, with love.

**_“She was an ocean full of storms and sailing in her would have made him lose his path forever. But he was not ready to give up without taking that risk. He set his sail and kept moving into the heart of the ocean . . . and once the storm was over all he saw was a place that no one could imagine and nobody had ever reached. And in the end the journey was worth it.”_ **

**― Akshay Vasu, The Abandoned Paradise**

* * *

At first, she's not entirely sure she isn't dreaming.

Her head is still spinning and throbbing (Jackson relented and gave her two pills, but it takes them a little longer to kick in each time), and they haven't stopped the night terrors altogether.  But she dreamed this moment more than once, even before the brain damage.  This wouldn't be the first time she's found herself desperately pressing her hands against a seeping wound in his abdomen, frantically trying to hold the blood back in.  On the Ark, she saved his (and then, later, he saved hers).  In the dreams, she never does.

This could be a dream, she insists to herself, with desperate, diminishing certainty, as the heartbeat beneath her hand slows, and slows, and slows, as the hoarse ragged rise and fall of his breath begins to soften, its peaks and valleys leveling out into plains before silencing altogether, and then the world goes still.

Time stops when his heart does.  Not just for him, but for all of them.

The dull heaviness of death drops over them with a thick gray hush, slowing everything down, muffling the chaos of the rest of the bunker and cocooning them in reverent silence for what feels like an eternity. 

The last time she looked down at her hands to see his blood on them, he'd lived anyway.

The last time she heard Marcus say those words, they were for his mother.

Marcus, steady and silent at her side, is how she knows she isn't dreaming.  The warmth of his skin beneath the thin gray cotton of his shirt as she rests her cheek on his shoulder.  The scent of him, dust and soap and sweat.  The even murmur of his breath.  In, out.  In, out. 

Marcus is the only real thing in the world.

But Marcus is as stricken as she is, and is no more capable of coherent thought; and so, rather unexpectedly, it's Indra who steps in to take charge.  Abby has never had the kind of bond with the Grounder woman that Marcus has, but she's overwhelmed with gratitude at a moment like this for her stone-faced, unflappable presence.  Nothing rattles Indra.  Especially not Death, her oldest and closest comrade, met so many times that they know each other's faces intimately by now.  Indra is grieving, in her way, but her way is different.  And she does not think the Sky People weak, or soft, the way she once did, that they can do nothing more right now than kneel on the cold concrete floor and stare with blank, dazed eyes at the body slumped against the wall in front of them.  She lets them have their time.

Dimly, through the fog, Abby hears Indra exchange a few rapid-fire words under her breath with Octavia, quiet enough to be inaudible even if her Trigedasleng had improved enough to keep up with the women's clipped pace.  But she doesn't need to understand it to understand it.  Octavia wants to stay, but Indra needs her to go.  _Osleya_ has a job to do, after all, she can’t stay here all night, with a Skaikru _coup d’etat_ to reckon with; something will have to be done with Kara Cooper, and right now the people need to see their leader’s face.  But the girl seems oddly reluctant to leave the dead man's side, which for Octavia is rather remarkable, and if there were any space left inside Abby's mind for anything like curiosity, she might wonder how on earth it came to be that Octavia had not only established a reluctant truce to perform an urgently-needed task with _him_ of all people, but perhaps, in some way, began to think of him as a man who was no longer an enemy.  A man whose death brought sorrow, not pleasure or relief. 

Someday she will ask Octavia for the story.  But not now.

She doesn't speak as she moves to withdraw, leaving the others alone to return to her duties as leader, but as she goes, she pauses for a moment to drop a gentle hand on Marcus' shoulder.  Absently, he lifts his own to cover it - an unconscious gesture he's done a thousand times with Abby.  Oh God, how she's missed it, that faint, delicate brush of his fingertips on the back of her knuckles. Pure comfort. Her heart cracks open a little as she looks at them; Marcus is one of the few people in all the world who can still see the seventeen-year-old girl inside the warrior queen's armor, who can recognize that, as she reaches out a hand to reassure him with her touch, she's asking for her own reassurance too.

Then she withdraws her hand in silence and disappears down the dark hallway.

 _"Yu gonplei ste odon_ ," says Indra softly, kneeling down beside Marcus - then, unexpectedly adds, "May we meet again." 

Abby presses her eyes closed to hold back the fresh stream of tears at the sound of Indra, speaking the foreign blessing words of a clan she once wished to see exterminated altogether, as a marker of respect - grudgingly earned, and far from steady, but still genuine - for the man she just watched die.

Such a little thing, yet it means so much.

 _Maybe it really_ can _be different down here,_ she thinks.  _Maybe we didn't lose him for nothing.  Maybe Octavia can really do it._

And then it happens.

Before either of them can stop her, Indra has risen to her feet, lifting the body of Thelonious Jaha in her arms as though he weighs nothing at all.

“No,” Marcus protests in a shaky, cracked whisper which makes Abby's heart ache.  “Indra, please . . . not yet.”

“The body is not the man, Kane,” Indra says, her low voice firm and steady, though not unkind.  “It was a good death, and _Osleya's_ sword gave him justice. But he is gone now. It is time.”

"Marcus, we have to take him to Med Bay," Jackson explains in a hesitant, apologetic voice, without elaborating any further.  Marcus doesn't know what he really means, but Abby does, she was in those meetings, it was Thelonious himself who repaired the cremation incinerator in the dull concrete room below Abby’s surgery and taught her how to use it.

They haven't had to use it yet, but tonight they will.

Tears sting her eyes and bile rises in her throat as she is suddenly, violently sick.

* * *

 Everything after that comes in bits and pieces, the whole world blurred at the edges, like a photograph taken out of focus. 

She remembers Indra, back warrior-straight, carrying Jaha's body to the chilly white morgue next door to Med Bay, where he - it - the dead thing that both is and isn't her friend Thelonious anymore - will await some kind of funeral rite (she doesn't know what, this hasn't come up in council meetings yet, Gaia is in charge of all this), before someone who is not her will do the thing which then will have to be done, the thing she cannot do, and put the body of Thelonious Jaha into that great iron machine he spent three days mending so the stench of burning bodies wouldn't seep out into the HVAC system and haunt them all in their beds.

She remembers Jackson, still shaky after the traumatic events of the day, torn between staying and going.  He has a job to do, and he wants to save Abby from being the one who has to do it, so she can feel him wanting to follow Indra down the hallway towards Med Bay; but she can also sense his entire body vibrating with panic at the sight of her heaving up gasping, choking breaths and vomiting onto the concrete floor.  He'll never stop feeling that his place is by her side, wherever she is.

But things are different now.  Slowly, he's begun to make space in his life to allow someone else to take care of Abby sometimes too.

“It’s okay, Eric,” says Marcus, his hand rubbing soothing strokes up and down her back, and she can't see them, but she knows their eyes are locked on each other in wordless debate. “Go with Indra.  I’ve got her. It’s okay.”

Through the haze of tears and retching and the blinding headache pounding behind her eyes and the black hollow of grief opening up inside her chest like the blossoming of a dark flower, a part of her wants to laugh.

 _Even_ I _don’t call him Eric._

It's been grating on her, the last six weeks, watching the two of them become friends.  She's been trying since the minute they hit the ground, dammit, but Jackson wouldn't budge.  The shocklashing was a bridge too far, he'd never looked at the man the same way after that.  It would have made all their lives a damn sight easier if the two men could have put their differences behind them long before this; but Jackson was protective and suspicious, and Marcus wary of crossing him.  But _this,_ of all times, when she spent the past weeks so blazingly furious at Marcus that she would instantly leave any room he was in . . . here, suddenly, their shared concern for her managed to bridge the divide.  She knew they talked about her.  She knew Marcus would always have more information about her medical condition than she wanted him to, because Jackson would tell him whatever he asked.  She knew Jackson knew more about Marcus' feelings than she would ever have told him herself, and perhaps Marcus had even said things to Jackson that he had never said to her.  She watched it happen, the development of this trust, this silent communication, this allegiance built out of shared love for her, and she resented it with all her heart.  But now she's grateful for it, now it's the thing she needs most in the world, because she doesn't have to say anything.  They both just know.

So she closes her eyes, listening to Jackson's footsteps grow fainter in the distance, and lets the tears fall, the sour tang of her bile on the cold floor mixed with the scent of death, and her entire world shrinks down to the size of Marcus Kane’s hand stroking her back for the first time in forty-six days.

* * *

 

Time still isn't real, so she has no idea how long they sit there together before the fog clears enough that she's aware of him rising to his feet and lifting her into his arms.  She exhales, finally, ragged and spent, as he carries her away from that place.

She will never be able to walk down this hallway again without feeling sick. She already knows this, all the way down to her bones.

Abby and Jackson's shared quarters next to Med Bay are only three doors down from the morgue.  Marcus doesn't take her there.  He doesn't take her to his own quarters, either, to the bunk room he shares – _shared,_ she corrects herself distantly – with Thelonious.  His ghost is too close to both their beds, tonight. 

Instead, he carries her up the spiraling ramp of the rotunda.  They pass the office, where Marcus leans in and murmurs a few low words to Octavia that Abby doesn't hear.  Her eyes are closed, her head is swimming, and the warm solid expanse of Marcus' shoulder muscles where her cheek rests against the soft sleeve of his gray shirt is the only real thing in the world anymore. 

"Take mine," says Octavia's voice, distantly, as though Abby's hearing her from underwater, "I don't sleep much anyway."

So Marcus carries her on, up and up, until they reach the top of the spiral, to the bedroom which once belonged to Bill Cadogan and now belongs to Octavia, on the rare occasion she ever uses it.  If she sleeps at all, it's on that office couch, for a few hours at a time.

Eyes closed, Abby drifts through fog, aware of very little, until she's roused back to something like consciousness by the unexpected sound of running water, and, filtering through her eyelids, a change in the light. 

She opens her eyes.

Marcus has carried her into Cadogan’s large, private white-and-glass washroom, where she inhales nothing but lemon and bleach and chlorinated water.  Clean things.  A knot inside her chest loosens, one she didn't even realize was there.

The _smells._

Blood, bile, vomit, death.  It's taking everything she has to swallow down another round of violent retching, which Marcus has observed without having to be told.  It was a curse before it was a gift, the way he can look straight at her and see everything she refuses to say; on the Ark it made him a monstrous nuisance, but down here it was the thing she fell in love with first.  No one has ever _seen_ her like he does, in all her life.  Six weeks of coldness, fury, distance, have changed nothing.  He's as attuned to her as he ever was; perhaps more so, since observing from a distance was all he had.  Perhaps he's more aware because he's had to be, because he knew she would never tell him anything herself.  Perhaps that's why he still knows the thing she needs most in the world, even before she can put it into words.

To wash everything away.

Steam is beginning to fill the glass box of the massive, walk-in shower, and he tests the water temperature without letting go of her, flexing his elbow outward to catch the spray, dampening the sleeve of his shirt.  She tries to think of what to say, as she waits for him to deposit her on her feet and then recuse himself to the outer room, leaving her alone.  “Thank you” seems wrong, “I’m sorry” opens doors she’s not ready to open yet, and “I missed you” is redundant, since that part, at least, he must already know.  

But he doesn’t leave her an opening for any of that.

Instead, he carries her straight into the shower, fully dressed, and holds her to his chest as the hot, clean spray rains down on them from above.

“Marcus,” she chokes out, stunned beyond belief.  “What are you doing?”

“I’m not letting go of you,” he whispers fiercely into her hair.  “I’m not leaving you alone.”

 _Oh, thank God,_ her whole body exhales in relief.  She tries to speak, but no sound comes out.  He sees, and shakes his head gently.  “Later,” he murmurs.  “Not now. It’s okay. I’m not going anywhere.”

So she closes her eyes and tilts her chin upwards to let the water pour down over her face, washing the sweat from her tangled hair, the stink of vomit from her shirt, the blood and bile of Thelonious Jaha from the palms of her hands. She lets the clean sweet spray wash the sickly taste from her mouth, soak through her clothes, and begin to permeate the fog that descended around her when she first felt the heart beneath her hand stop beating.

“Can I help you with your boots?” Marcus asks gently, and she nods, biting her lip, grateful for the hot water coursing down her face so he won’t see the tears.  He’s still so hesitant, so vulnerable, so unsure. Still not quite sure what they are to each other yet, so he takes refuge in practicalities. Setting her down gently on her feet, letting her hold onto him for balance.  Four wet boots and four faded socks make their way to the tiled floor outside the shower, rivulets of gray sluicing off leather and creating dark rivers on the floor, taking the dust of the bunker with them.  She knows he won’t go further than this until she gives him the sign, but no amount of clean water can purge the death from these clothes.  She wants to burn them, suddenly.  Throw them in the incinerator with his body, never to be seen again.  Let Niylah find her something new.  Something she didn't watch Thelonious die in.

She reaches down with one hand to unzip her jeans, the other gripping his arm for balance.  She isn't thinking about _that,_ not at first, but she sees him swallow hard, fighting to keep his eyes locked on hers instead of flicking downward, following her hands, and that's when her body remembers how long it's been.

Her cheeks flush, not just from the heat.

"Is it your clothes?" he presses her gently, brow furrowed.  "Is that part of what's making you sick?"  She nods, gratefully.  "The smell," he guesses, and she nods again.  "Do you want me to -"

She nods, _yes,_ but he doesn’t assume a second yes from the first one.  He takes it on face value: getting out of wet clothes, washing the grim odors away.  If all there is is this, it’s enough for him.

It will always have to be Abby who closes the distance.

She doesn't do it yet.  She lets him tend to her first, lets him get used to closeness again.  He holds her steady as she tugs her jeans down over her hips and steps out of them, before helping her tug the soaking wet fabric of her thin cotton shirt over her head.  He hesitates, after that, until he sees the yes in her eyes and steps in close to reach back behind her and unfasten the clasp of her bra, pulling it gently off and dropping it onto the heap of clothing outside the shower.  He doesn't touch her breasts, or even look at them, and he doesn't move to help her with her threadbare cotton panties either, leaving her to pull them off herself.  She steps back from him, just a little, not because she wants distance, but to let him see her.

But his eyes don't leave hers.  He still isn't sure he has the right.

"Yours too," she says, keeping her voice gentle, nonthreatening.  "You must want to."

He does, but he's awkward and hesitant, for reasons which become immediately clear once his soaked black jeans join hers on the sodden heap beside their boots, and she realizes the rosy flush on his cheeks is partly mortification.  Like he's ashamed of his desire, like it's invasive somehow, like it doesn't belong in this moment.  Covering it with his hands would only draw attention, but with each piece of clothing he sheds she watches his whole body contract and withdraw.

“I know you loved him,” she says suddenly, startling them both with the change of subject.  His head snaps back to her, as though the words cause him actual, physical pain.  “So did I. I mean I hated him sometimes, but I loved him too.”  Marcus doesn't say anything.  "He cried when Wells was born," she continues, somewhat at random, not sure why this suddenly matters so much.  "Did he ever tell you that?  The second we saw his head crowning.  Like it suddenly made the whole thing real.  Just burst into tears, right there in the delivery room.  Both of them, father and son, crying and crying, until I got the baby all clean and wrapped up and put him in his arms, and suddenly Wells stopped crying - just looking up at his dad with those big brown eyes - and then Thelonious stopped too.  They were just in their own world, after that."

Marcus looks at her, silent, jaw clenching and unclenching, too many emotions to name roiling in his sad brown eyes.  “Come here, baby,” she says gently, stepping in close enough to reach him. “Come here.”

She opens her arms, and Marcus falls into them, and time stops again.  

She's missed his skin against hers so much that she feels tears sting her eyes at the sheer blissful relief of his touch.  She can still feel the half-hard swell of him pressed against her thigh, but they don't acknowledge it, for now.  There's so many other things happening at once.  Wet, warm skin, heartbeat against heartbeat, the brush of wet beard against the bare skin of her shoulder, Marcus in her arms again, shaking with the sobs he's finally just now releasing, and she knows his grief is bigger than just Thelonious.

It's because they’re the only ones left.

Jake Griffin is gone.  Vera.  Shumway.  Diana. Byrne. Pike. Sinclair. David Miller.  All of them, gone.  Along with the chancellor who led his people back to Earth. There is nothing left of their generation outside these four glass walls.  

If she had died in Praimfaya, there would have been no one left at all but Marcus Kane.

She holds him for a long time, the muscles of his back achingly familiar beneath her hands. It’s like coming home, to touch his naked body again.  She reaches up to the ledge and pulls down the clear plastic bottle of soap, and the blissfully antiseptic smell of artificial lemon and rosemary fills the steaming air as Abby washes them both clean, filling her hands with lather and running them all over his skin, through his hair, and over her own body, rinsing everything away - dust, blood, anger, the past - until there's nothing left but them.

“You were right,” she whispers, smoothing the damp locks back from his temples. “You were right.  I would do it again a thousand times, too.”

“Abby . . .” he murmurs, lifting his head to meet her eyes.

“You’re all I have left,” she says softly.  “We’ve lost everything else. We can’t lose each other.”

“I don’t . . .”  He pauses, choosing his words with care.  “I don’t blame you for your anger,” he says finally.  “You had every right to it. I understand why you felt the way you felt.  But Abby, the thought of – “

“Hush,” she says, laying a hand on his lips, seeing the pain in his eyes.  “I know. But that’s over.”

He closes his eyes, letting his forehead drop to rest against hers, and she suddenly remembers Arkadia.  She knew Pike would shoot her without a second thought if he'd caught her trying to save Marcus, but she did it anyway.  She'd pried boulders off his crushed leg, worked day and night to concoct a Nightblood solution, gone against her own daughter to open the bunker door.  Every time he'd come close to walking into death, even if he was resigned to it, she'd pulled him back as hard as she could, refusing to let him go. And he'd done the same for her - on the crucifix, in Mount Weather. 

This is who they are to each other, she realizes.  It isn't that he wasn't strong enough to leave her outside.  It's nothing to do with strength.  It's simply a fact of who they are.  A force as immutable as gravity. 

They will never, ever be able to let the other die.

It's bigger than love, it existed even before love did, love has only sharpened it and given it more urgency.  It's simply who they are now. 

Abby remembers the look in his eyes, soft and worried and sad, when he asked her that devastating question - asked it as though there was a part of him that really didn't know, that couldn't let himself believe it.  She remembers the way he almost, almost smiled when she whispered that heartbroken _no,_ stunned to learn he could still doubt her, shattered at the realization that she'd given him reasonable cause for that doubt.  She remembers the way his breathing grew ragged as he finally, finally, let himself reach for her, as his fingertips touched her cheek and all the force of that love came rushing back in like a dam had broken the second she felt his skin on hers for the first time in forty-six days.

 _No more,_ she tells herself firmly, and tugs his head down to meet hers.

The kiss _shocks_ him, she can feel his whole body stiffen, and part of her almost wants to laugh.  Naked and alone with her in a steaming hot shower, but still taken by surprise when Abby steps over the line.  

_Idiot._

But the tide turns immediately, and then it's her turn to be shocked, because the way he pulls her in to kiss her back is nothing short of ferocious.  He meets her with raw hunger, fueled by weeks of suppressed desire and unsaid things, combined with the aching magnitude of grief and the need for something, anything to purge it.  He’s _never_ kissed her like this before, so desperate it would almost feel angry if she didn’t know him so well.  He's always been so careful with her, the way big men so often are, as though afraid to hurt her, and she's always had to be the one to urge him on when she wants him to be rougher with her.  There's a part of her that loves being adored, cherished, cared for tenderly, but there's also a part of her that wants the Marcus Kane who interrupted her mid-sentence with a first kiss so forceful it knocked her off-balance.  It's that Marcus multiplied by a thousand who backs her up against the slick shower wall, growling into her open mouth, body pressed up against hers with such force that heat spikes through her veins and makes her whole body tremble.  His hands glide over her wet skin, down her back and around her waist and up to clutch firmly at her breasts, circling her nipples with the pads of his thumbs until they stiffen into aching peaks.  She feels sticky wetness begin to pool between her thighs, and the swell pressed against her hip is now so hard it's almost painful.  Hot water pounds down over the wings of his shoulderblades, streaming down his arms to trail hot rivulets over her breasts as he kisses and kisses and kisses her, as the entire world disappears.

When he finally pulls himself away, he steps back abruptly, panting, shaking, as though he's almost afraid of himself.  Shoulders heaving, swallowing hard.  She can hear his heart pounding like a drum.  He can't look at her anymore.

She reaches out to grip his waist in her warm wet hands and pull him back to her.  "Yes," she whispers, leaning forward to rest her forehead against his chest.  "Yes," as her hands slide down his thighs.  "Yes," before she parts her lips to let her tongue trace the angles of his collarbone, making him shiver.  "Yes," as she reaches down to take him in her hand, the weight of him warm and heavy and sweet and hard all the way through, pulsing in her gentle grip like a living thing.

“Abby, I,” he swallows hard, “we can’t –  here . . .”

“I need you inside me again,” she whispers, shocked at her own frankness, and watches a flush sweep across his cheeks.  She’s never said _anything_ like this to him before.

“Abby – God, you know I . . . it's been so long . . . but are you sure this is what you want?”

“I never stopped missing you," she breathes, trailing kisses along his throat, jaw, cheeks.  "Even when I was angry.  When I thought I could never forgive you.  I never stopped missing the way it feels when you touch me.  I'm not whole without that anymore.  I need to be whole again.  I need to be _filled_ again." Her lips find his, soft, persuasive, teasing his mouth open with her tongue until she feels him melt into her, his resistance fading, his wild yearning flowing back in its place.

“Abby," he exhales her name in a tone that's more breath than sound, the way he says it when he just wants to feel the way it sounds in his mouth, the way it tastes on his tongue.  "Abby.  Abby."

“Stay here with me,” she murmurs, “please.  I need you.”

“I’ve been waiting so long to hear you say that,” he tells her softly, and then his mouth is on hers again.

When he nudges her thighs apart and pushes inside her, he doesn't hold back, gliding in smoothly but forcefully until he's filled her all the way up with one firm stroke, and they both shudder with something that's as much relief as it is pleasure.  Finally.  _Finally._

 _'_ Stay here, for a minute," she whispers into the hollow beneath his ear, lifting one thigh to wrap around his waist, holding him deep inside her.  "Don't move, yet.  Just stay with me.  Let me feel you."

He doesn't respond, but pulls her tighter.  One arm wraps around her, cradling her head gently in the crook of his elbow to keep her from bumping against the wall, as the other slips down between their bodies to find the plump little bud of her aching clit, causing a sharp little cry to tumble out of her lips as he rubs it gently, perfectly, deft and practiced and sure of himself, knowing exactly the way she likes it.  "Abby," he mumbles into her wet, lemon-scented hair, and she knows he's aching inside her, she can feel the force of his want building and building. 

"Don't be gentle," she whispers to him.  "You don't have to be gentle with me."

"I don't want to hurt you."

"You won't."

"Abby . . ."

"I trust you," she whispers.  "I know I'm safe."

"I'll always keep you safe," he tells her, voice aching with emotion, and then his mouth finds hers again, and he does exactly what she asks.

He glides out slowly, but plunges in _hard,_ making her cry out in stunned pleasure, and he knows all the sounds she makes when he's inside her so he knows this one is permission, encouragement, a plea for more.  So he gives it to her.  Harder, harder, harder, slamming her against the slick tile wall, so forcefully that if he wasn't cradling her head in his arm with such care she'd be worried about cracking her skull.  He pushes up into her over and over again, fingers still deft and slick against her clit, tongue sweeping into her mouth so she can taste his incoherent moans of pleasure.

"I'm going to come," she pants into his ear, "but don't stop.  I like the way it feels to come when you're inside me."

"You're different, like this," he whispers, astonishment in his voice.  "You've never said things like this before.  You've never told me what you wanted like this before."

"We wasted too much time already," she pants, nuzzling into his shoulder.  "We've spent too damn long not saying things."

"I like you like this," he tells her, wide-eyed with desire and wonder, and then she tumbles over the cliff, arching her back as she feels herself quiver and contract and pulse against the heavy thick cock inside her, coming and coming as he groans in pleasure at the feeling of her muscles pulling him in.

"Marcus," she gasps as the orgasm recedes, leaving her soft, yielding, open, letting him sink in even deeper than before.  "Oh God, baby.  Please.  Please."

"Tell me what you want," he whispers, as his hips crash into hers over and over and over again.  "Tell me anything, and you can have it.  I'll give you anything."

"I just want you," she tells him, voice trembling, love and grief and longing tangling themselves up with the desire pulling his body over and over into hers, like a heap of ribbons spilled on the floor.  "You, right here.  With me.  No matter what.  I don't want to lose you again."

"Never," he whispers fiercely, thrusting into her so hard that he lifts her off the tile floor.  "Never.  Never.  Never."

"Let me feel you come," she murmurs, feeling how close he is, feeling the cock inside her begin to pulse and throb and ache for release.  "Come inside me."

"Come with me," he tells her, closing his eyes, bending down to rest his forehead against hers, pinching her clit between thumb and forefinger to rub it in firm, blissful circles, and Abby's arms circle around his neck as her other leg wraps around his waist, holding onto him for dear life as he pins her against the wall.  They've never fucked standing up, they've never done it this hard, it's never felt like this before in all her life.  She didn't know she had this in her.  She wants him to fuck everything away, purging her clean like the hot water did, opening her up and letting every dark thing drain out of her.  She knows outside these four glass walls a whole world is waiting, a world full of people and things she can't think about right now - Clarke, Thelonious, Octavia, Kara Cooper, the farm, the bunker door.  She knows she can't hide forever.  This is a temporary respite only, but it's still a real one, and it heals a real thing inside her to feel Marcus shuddering in her arms, groaning her name as his fingers draw a second orgasm up from the depths of her, before letting her clit go and wrapping his other arm around her back to cradle her entire body against his as though she weighs nothing.

When he comes, he cries out so fiercely it sounds like pain, arms clamping even more tightly around her body to lock her in place as he thrusts and thrusts, until every drop of him has been drained and he can't hold himself inside her anymore.  He lowers her back down to her feet then, gentle, careful, all his old tender attentiveness returning, and for a long time they just stand there together under the steaming hot spray, as it sears them pink and clean, washing the sticky warmth and the musky smell of sex away and sluicing it down the metal drain.

Abby's thighs finally give out, causing her to stumble, but once again he's right there.  She closes her eyes and lets herself be held, lifted, carried, lets him towel her dry and wrap her up and lead her over to Octavia's bed, where he climbs in beside her and wraps her up tightly in his arms.

"I haven't slept through the night in a month," he confesses, murmuring into her wet hair.  "I don't know how it happened.  We only had a few nights in Polis, but somehow, after that . . ."

"I know," she whispers.  "Me too."

"Everything's all right, when you're here beside me," he tells her.  "Everything falls to pieces when you're not."

"I'm not going anywhere," she whispers.  "You're all I have left, Marcus.  You're everything to me.  I'm not going anywhere."

"Sleep, love," he murmurs, pulling the covers more tightly around them, and she feels exhaustion settle over her like a heavy blanket.  She's so tired.  She's been tired for so long.  She hasn't been able to let go, to breathe, to sleep, since the last time he held her in his arms.  

There will be time for everything tomorrow.  Time to find a new place for Marcus to sleep and new things for Abby to wear, neither of which are tainted by ghosts.  Time to say goodbye to Thelonious, to offer up the proper rites and give him the farewell he has earned.  Time to deal with Kara Cooper, time to deal with the farm and the door, time to settle the conflict among the clans.  Time for everything.  They don't have to do anything now, except listen to each other's heartbeats, and remember that they aren't alone.

"Thank you," she whispers, as she drifts off to sleep.

"For what?"

"For not giving up on me," she says.  "I know I didn't make it easy."

He presses a kiss into her hair.  "You were worth it," he murmurs.  "I would have waited forever for you."

 

 


End file.
